1. Field of the Invention
The present general inventive concept relates to an image forming apparatus, and more particularly, to an electrophotographic image forming apparatus having a transparent toner and a printing method thereof.
2. Description of the Related Art
Conventional Electrophotographic image forming apparatuses form an electrostatic latent image by scanning light onto a photosensitive body charged to a uniform electric potential, develop the electrostatic latent image with a predetermined color of toner and then transfer and fuse the developed image onto a printing medium, thereby printing a desired image. In general, four colors of toners, such as yellow (Y), magenta (M), cyan (C), and black (B), are used in electrophotographic color image forming apparatuses, and four developing units are used to develop the electrostatic latent image formed on the photosensitive body with these four colors of toners.
A toner is manufactured based on a plastic resin and thus has some gloss. A portion of a printed image to which the toner is attached has some gloss but a background region of the printed image to which the toner is not attached has no gloss. In addition, a higher coverage (i.e., a ratio of an area to which the toner is attached to a total area of the printing medium) of the printed image produces a higher gloss. The gloss of the printed image affects the visual quality of the image. U.S. Patent Publication No. 20060127134 discloses an image forming apparatus featuring a transparent image forming station to improve the gloss of a printed image by employing developing devices for developing electrostatic images with color toners and a developing device for developing an electrostatic image with a transparent toner. In such an image forming apparatus, an amount of a consumed transparent toner is considerably larger than an amount of a consumed color toner.